Green Earth Practice: Change up your Commute

Green Earth Practice: change the way you commute.  Try riding a bike to work or walking or running or public transit.

 

I grew up in the midwest and very much "dependent" on my car.  My father worked for an automotive company and cars were just part of our landscape growing up.  So you can only imagine when fresh out of college I moved out to San Francisco and within a week told my father I was getting rid of my car.  I'd like to think that it was to be more environmentally friendly,  but the fact was it was really darn expensive to own a car in SF, especially when I rarely used it.

 

Being car free in a big city was great.  Taking public transportation was always an option, but the fact that bike paths were everywhere made biking to work an easy and fun option.  It was also liberating. It felt like being a kid again. Zooming down hills and weaving through traffic.  Powering a vehicle with my own energy. 

 

After living in different big cities throughout the world, I always looked at how to navigate by way of foot, bike, or public transit. I rarely took taxis (uber wasn't a thing yet), mostly because I like to save money when I can.  So when we moved to rural northern Michigan,  I wanted to try to stay as car free as possible. We are lucky to have found a home only a half mile from town.  I still walk and bike (and in the snowy winters -snowshoe & ski) into town.  But I also dont beat myself up for the occasional trip to the recycling center in my car. (Although my husband still prefers the journey on bike with a loaded kids bike trailer in tow). 

 

See if you can switch it up.  Opt to walk or bike to work.  Or park further away and give yourself a longer walk to where you are headed.  Movement doesn't have to be only when you are carving out your 'exercise time'.